


prompt fills

by storytellingape



Category: Boy Eats Girl (2005), Crash Pad (2017), Logan Lucky (2017), Star Wars Episode VII: The Force Awakens (2015)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Teenagers, Kylux Adjacent Ship, M/M, Oral Sex, Prompt Fill
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-01-28
Updated: 2018-10-16
Packaged: 2019-03-10 15:37:36
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 5,477
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13504539
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/storytellingape/pseuds/storytellingape
Summary: fills for prompts:i. welcome to your life - stensland takes his date home for the night and it turns out he's a keeper.ii. boy next door - stensland moves in next door and clyde's summer is immediately improved.iii. neighbours - good catholic boy bernard gets a new neighbour





	1. welcome to your life

**Author's Note:**

> I had asked for prompts [here](https://twitter.com/softgingertwink/status/957394830807597056) and some wonderful people delivered.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This one's for [Harlanhardway](https://twitter.com/Harlanhardway) with the prompt: "Stensland is stood up for a blind date, but doesn't realize it 'cause he thinks it's Clyde. Clyde has no clue why this goober is talking to him, but then is weirdly charmed. Bonus if Clyde spends the night and Stensland takes him out for strawberry milk in the morning."

* * *

 

 

 

Stensland shows up at the bar half an hour early because if something could be said about him it’s that he’s always consistently punctual. 

Besides, it’s a date, and no one should ever be late to a date if one intends to receive some sort of reciprocal below the belt contact. More importantly, he needs to scope the place for any potential exits should the entire thing go south and he ends up getting recruited into a cult again. His roommate had set the whole thing up, after Stensland had moaned to him about getting his heart broken for the fifth time this month. The problem, his roommate says, is that Stensland is a bonafide idiot who falls for the wrong people and almost always scares them off with talk of the future. No one wants to think about white picket fences or matching bath robes when giving or taking dick. No one. Unless they’re crazy just like Stensland. 

Stensland will make an effort tonight, and wisely keep his comments to himself. He’s dressed in what seems, in his opinion, as smart casual: a pair of black slacks, a crisp button up shirt, a little red necktie and jacket combo that of course, makes him look like a proper cunt, with his hair smoothed back and everything, but he could very well be meeting the love of his life so he’s willing to take the risk. He’d forgotten his phone at the apartment, but remembers enough about the guy he’s supposed to meet. His roommate had described him as tall, with an accent, which honestly isn’t all that helpful when trying to determine the personality of a person but that’s all Stensland remembers. He’d been drunk at the time, possibly crying.

He waits for an hour, then another, telling himself to stop fidgeting and touching his stiff hair. 

The bar fills up quickly after dark, a crowd of guys in denim overalls and cowboy boots scuffed at the heels. Stensland is halfway through his second pint, his knee jittery under the table, his stomach tying itself in knots when the awful realization that he’s been ghosted starts to hit along with the booze. He’s about to call it quits and storm dramatically out of the bar when his date walks in, ducking through the door in an army-green jacket before giving the room a quick scan. When their eyes meet briefly, Stensland is hit with a jarring slice of undiluted lust, cutting cleanly through any other thought he may have about his date being an utter dick. He waves the guy over, and the guy blinks at him once before ambling uncertainly toward his booth like he’s not sure he’s even supposed to be here. He certainly is tall, not to mention broad, with dark wavy hair up to his chin and the fuzzy beginnings of a goatee. And he seems to be wearing a prosthetic arm. Stensland wonders what the story behind that is. Maybe, if it all goes well, he’ll be able to find out. 

“You’re late,” Stensland says, trying to go for playful when really he’s been shredding dozens of paper napkins all night and has amassed enough paper cranes to form a small mountain on the table. “But that’s just fine,” he counters. Of course it is, the guy’s gorgeous, and when he seats himself across the cramped table, he even apologizes for bumping knees with Stensland, though not, interestingly enough, for his lack of punctuality. 

“I’m Stensland.” Stensland thrusts out a hand. It feels like a business transaction, but when his hand is clasped, he feels two things all at once: heady and warm all over. 

“Clyde.” His hand is squeezed briefly then released. “Logan.”

“Well, Clyde Logan,” says Stensland in an attempt to sound breezy. “I noticed you have an accent.”

Clyde gives him a funny look. He also keeps glancing over his shoulder at the door. “Well, Stensland,” he says. “So do you.”

He smiles and Stensland is irreversibly charmed.

The date goes swimmingly, much to Stensland’s surprise, that he only drinks enough to be tipsy and not lose his sense of self or gravity. Clyde is a war veteran, and after a third tour in Iraq had lost his hand in an explosion that nearly decimated his entire platoon. He’s funny, and sweet, and he’s really ticking all of Stensland’s boxes. When he forms his mouth around words very carefully, Stensland has to restrain himself from squeezing his dick in his pants. 

The evening ends with Stensland shamelessly inviting Clyde back to his apartment. There’s a brief moment when he thinks Clyde is going to decline, call it a night and flag him a taxi home, _it’s been great and maybe I’ll call you_ — all these thoughts knifing through his brain at breakneck speed and making him only sick with nerves, and then Clyde opens the door ahead of him and tells him to lead the way; he keeps the door open so Stensland has to duck under his arm to pass him, and when Clyde calls them a taxi, his hand never leaves Stensland’s knee the entire drive to the apartment. 

Clyde kisses him at the doorstep. It’s sweet, and wholly unexpected. Stensland is patting around his arse for his keys when Clyde leans in and grabs him gently by the forearm and kisses him, slow and tentative, with just the right amount of tongue and teeth. By the time, Stensland does manage to locate his keys, he’s half-hard in his trousers, yanking Clyde inside and pushing the jacket off his shoulders. He’s glad his roommate isn’t home tonight, but visiting family in Jersey. 

Stensland walks them backwards to the general direction of the bedroom, briefly embarrassed at how filthy his living condition is when he has to shove everything off the bed and onto the floor where it’s even more of a mess, a clutter of clothing and random knickknacks in random heaps and piles. Clyde doesn’t seem to mind though, seating himself on the edge of the bed, his knees spread apart, leaning his weight on his good hand. He glances up at Stensland, who waits a beat before crawling in an inelegant straddle over his lap. It’s a bold move, and he has nowhere to rest his hands so he settles for wrapping his arms around Clyde’s shoulders instead. It’s a snug fit, and he feels himself dangerously close to getting comfortable, picturing himself riding Clyde’s dick until the bed shakes, or just sitting in his lap while they go through a latter season of _Dawnson’s Creek._

Clyde kisses him again, leaning up, cupping his face. His breath smells like mints and his hair sweeps gently against Stensland’s cheek, making Stensland wrinkle his nose then sneeze. “I’m glad I met you tonight,” Clyde says, running his nose across the side of Stensland’s face. “Look at you, you’re beautiful.”

“You should see my arse,” Stensland tells him, already swallowing around the heady feeling of being so openly complimented. No one’s ever called him beautiful before, not even those he’d bring home to fuck him. 

“Yeah,” Clyde says, then laughs when he cops a feel of Stensland’s arse. He sounds sincere, even. “It’s tiny.”

“Oi!” says Stensland, poking him in the shoulder. He nearly jumps when he feels Clyde’s warm hand cupping his bottom again, giving it a gentle squeeze then another.

“It fits my hand,” Clyde points out.

“You just have an unnaturally big one, that’s why.” And then because Stensland has no sense of tact whatsoever, he adds, “I’d like you to finger me.” Then: “ _Please_.”

A beat passes, then another. A lazy fly buzzes by the windowpane. Clyde swallows visibly, looking at Stensland without blinking before giving him a shaky nod. He’s so handsome; Stensland doesn’t know how he’s managed to lead him into his bed. Maybe he’ll reveal himself to be a total dick, afterwards; maybe he’s actually a killer of children. Some personality flaw will put Stensland off, he knows, sooner than later because all this is too good to be true. But looking at Clyde, all sweet and earnest, staring up at him adoringly, Stensland somehow doubts that. 

“Is that what you want now? My finger up your ass?” Clyde asks.

“Fingers,” Stensland corrects him, maybe a little bit too hastily. “I think I can take maybe four of yours.”

“ _Jesus_ ,” Clyde breathes. “You’re a naughty little thing aren’t you?”

“I have needs!” Stensland all but yells. He’s red in the face now and embarrassed, but alcohol tends to make him loose in more ways than one. Clyde tips him onto his back and does away with his pants, easing his briefs down to his ankles which looks harder to do with only one working hand. 

“C’mon now, spread ‘em,” Clyde says once he’s completed denuded Stensland into a pale shivering thing on the bed. Then he amends with. “ _Please,_ ” and Stensland does as asked, his eyes nearly rolling back in their sockets as soon as he feels Clyde’s hand slide up an inner thigh, holding him open, his hand a hot burning brand. 

Stensland squirms when he feels a warm gust of air hit his arsehole, and then Clyde’s spreading him with his middle and index finger before licking a hot stripe up and down his perineum. That hadn’t been part of the plan, but Stensland is not one to waste miracles. He arches up against Clyde’s hot mouth, and makes a grab for Clyde’s shoulder, rolling his hips in rhythm to that spearing wet tongue. It’s good, so good, that he barely registers Clyde teasing his hole open with the pad of his thumb, stroking his fingers over his balls before giving them attentive licks. Stensland clenches instinctively when Clyde presses his thumb forward, then his thumb is buried completely to the knuckle and suddenly Stensland is very very aroused, dripping precome all over his own chest. 

He pants down at Clyde who glances at him with his hair all over his face in a crazy curtain, his eyes glazed with a sheen of lust, his mouth half-open.

“ _Lube_ ,” Clyde says. He has to repeat himself twice because Stensland is too lust-addled to make sense of his accent. Stensland points Clyde to the nightstand with his elbow. Clyde leans up to kiss him before uncapping the bottle with his free hand, smearing the stuff all over his palm. His fingers are thick and perfect and rub at the itch that has Stensland keening as soon as his prostate is jolted. He wants Clyde to touch his cock but he’s willing to bet he can come from just getting his arse played like a flute. 

The sad part is, Clyde is completely clothed still. 

“You’re completely clothed still.”

Clyde glances down at himself. “Yeah,” he says slowly. “Do you want me to —” It takes some awkward maneuvering but in the end Stensland is able to wrench Clyde’s shirt over his head. He has a tattoo on his forearm, a very sturdy chest. Compared to his, Stensland’s body is a joke, lean and lanky with nipples the size of raisins, pale and pink. 

“Jeepers,” Stensland exclaims, because really, there’s nothing to say at this point: Clyde Logan is a work of art. He mouths at Clyde collarbones, then grips his biceps none too discreetly, one in each hand. He traces a finger down Clyde’s left arm, the wrist ending abruptly where a hand should be. Clyde watches his face closely, their eyes meeting. “It freaks people out,” he says, like he can read Stensland’s mind.

“Not me,” Stensland confesses, and for the first time he’s being honest. He guides Clyde’s stump toward his hip, and feels something heavy lodge inside his throat. Not pity, but something akin to a wave of undeniable affection. He swallows around it. It’s too early to develop feelings anyway. 

Clyde tips him forward onto his back again and continues his earlier attentions, reaching behind Stensland’s balls to finger him earnestly, one slick finger and then two, then three until Stensland starts to babble. He’s good at it, really; Stensland pants and bucks and whines and kicks his legs out in the air. He still has his socks on, the one with a hole worn through the left toe. Clyde swoops down to kiss his chest and lave a tongue over a taut nipple, all the while his fingers remain seated inside Stensland, stretching and rubbing, pushing out and then in.

“Oh god,” Stensland pants, as Clyde starts to kiss upward, tracing a wet path up his neck while pressing his completely covered dick against Stensland’s hip. “Oh god, yes, finger me daddy!”

“What?”

“Wha-huh?”

“Did you just call me —” and then Stensland comes, all over himself, shooting Clyde square above the eyelid. 

Clyde blinks at him, slowly, a spot off come dripping down his face. Stensland bites his lip, completely terrified, and then Clyde starts to laugh.

*

Stensland has never met anyone who stays after the …proceedings. Usually they fuck right off after the, well, _fucking_ and don’t return his calls or e-mails. Clyde surprises him by curling up next to him after Stensland sucks him off. He even thanks Stensland for the blowjob, kissing Stensland soundly before proceeding to pull the covers up around them both. He must be tired, Stensland thinks. Or crazy, just like him. No one ever stays the night. Stensland waits for Clyde to come to his senses and stays awake for the better part of the next hour, waiting for him to leave, or upend Stensland’s good opinion of him, but Clyde doesn’t budge, just moulds himself against the curve of Stensland’s back and snores into his neck. It’s…nice. Clyde smells nice. His hair is a bit scratchy against Stensland’s cheek but he doesn’t really mind. 

In the morning, Clyde is still there, and Stensland is almost annoyed at him for the sheer audacity. He doesn’t shrug Clyde’s heavy weight off his back, but stares at him for a long time, lifting Clyde’s arm off his waist so he can face him. He’s still gorgeous even in the morning so Stensland looks his fill while he still can, before the magic dissipates and he finds out Clyde only stayed because he’d forgotten to leave: the slope of his nose, his big lips, his sweet face soft with sleep. Stensland can see himself maybe falling in love with him and buying property together in the countryside if he weren’t so heavily in debt. 

Stensland reaches for his phone on the nightstand and sends his roommate a text, all the while his other hand is pre-occupied stroking Clyde’s hair. 

_You met Phil?,_ his roommate asks, fifteen minutes later. _I thought he bailed on you._

_Phil? Who’s Phil?,_ Stensland texts back. And then it hits him: the uncertain glances toward the door, Clyde’s confused look when Stensland had asked him why he had run late. He learns later that this arsehole Phil Altman stood him up, was supposed to have been his date but had somehow magically come down with the flu despite being the epitome of good health only hours before. Stensland wishes a blight on all of his metaphorical crops, never mind how attractive he is when Stensland pulls up a picture of him on Facebook. He looks like the type to break hearts, leather jacket and sunglasses fucking indoors, bearing a bit of a resemblance to Clyde with the long legs and bulk. No matter: Stensland prefers Clyde anyway, Clyde whose dick is so big Stensland had cried a little because he knew he wouldn’t be able to ride it, not unless he had copious amounts of lube slicking his arsehole and months of prep, or unless he had medical insurance and wanted to risk it, Clyde who’d looked at him funny and then laughed when Stensland told him how upset he was they couldn’t have anal, before cupping Stensland’s face in one hand and kissing him to say it was all right, he could finish him off in other ways, he could come from how pretty Stensland looked to him anyway. Pretty, he called Stensland pretty.

Currently, Stensland doesn’t know how to feel. Not anxious anymore, that’s for sure, watching Clyde as he slept and snored. Maybe a mix of gleeful and slightly scared.

Stensland maneuvers himself around Clyde’s snug embrace to deposit his phone back on the nightstand. Clyde’s eyes blink open as the movement jars him awake. He sniffs, glancing blearily around before seeming to remember where he is and offering Stensland a faint, sleep-laced smile. 

Stensland’s stomach flips a bit, especially when Clyde lowers his face to kiss him, humming against the side of his neck, running his good hand down his ribs under the covers.

“You’re still here,” Stensland says, more than slightly awed. 

Clyde tilts his head, the corners of his eyes pinching in a frown. “Did you want me to leave?”

“No!” Stensland says hastily, dragging him back against his person before he has the opportunity to think things through. “No! Stay. I mean, do you want to? I’ll make you breakfast. I think I still have some bacon in the freezer.”

He studies Clyde’s face for a moment, his hand cupped over the meat of Clyde’s shoulder, his heart hammering in his throat, and is relieved when a yawn mars the unreadable expression off Clyde’s face, breaking the tension. Clyde props his chin against Stensland’s chest, stretching on top of him like a massive dog. He’s warm, warm all over and his stump doesn’t bother Stensland in the least, never has. Stensland can get used lying in bed with him like this, with Clyde draped between the spread of his legs and Clyde watching him through the avalanche of hair curtaining his face. 

It’s early, and wintry sunlight is streaming in through the dirt-streaked drapes, highlighting the angles of Clyde’s face.

Stensland waits, his breath bated. 

“All right then,” Clyde says, then smiles again, eyes half-closed and sleepy. He hums. “I’m not goin’ anywhere if you don’t want me to.”

_Good_ , Stensland thinks. Because he’s planning on keeping this one for a very long time.

 

 

 

 

 

 


	2. boy next door

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> for the prompt: "STENSLAND + CLYDE BOY NEXT DOOR FIC. CLYDE GIVEN A TELESCOPE FOR HIS BIRTHDAY AND SUDDENLY STARTS USING IT A LOT" originally posted on [tumblr](https://storytellingape.tumblr.com/post/176422251810/stensland-clyde-boy-next-door-fic-clyde-given-a).

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Clyde and Stensland are teenagers. This one's rated G.

This summer is a hot one. Clyde spends most of it in his bedroom, half of which he shares with his big brother Jimmy, after he breaks his arm during one of their little ‘adventures’. The real story is that Jimmy had challenged him to climb the highest tree he could think of, and he’d ended up fracturing something important that couldn’t have just been fixed with a little ice and a bucket of Earle’s famous fried chicken from down the road. Clyde had to be driven to the hospital and everything, given pain medication so strong his whole body felt like it was stuffed with cotton with all the bones replaced.

Now he has to wear a cast for the rest of the summer, and it’s eight weeks of tumultuous heat making his skin crawl with sweat.

It’s going to be absolute torture, but one day Clyde’s mom buys him a telescope which she helps him assemble by the window piece by piece. “Somethin’ to keep you occupied so I don’t have to see you mopin’ round like a sittin’ duck,” she says, then kisses him on top of the head. He’s still grounded, though.

Most days, Jimmy is out hanging with his friends from school, up to his usual mischief so it’s usually just Clyde, his baby sister Mellie, and his grandma left at home. Clyde’s mom works as a nurse at the local hospital while his dad tends bar, a long-standing Logan family tradition that began when Clyde’s great granddaddy bought that alehouse at the turn of the century and called it  _Duck Tape_.

Every afternoon, Clyde sits by the window, tinkering with his telescope and swinging it around like an arctic explorer while sweat mats his t-shirt to his back and drips stinging line into his eyes. And the telescope is great and all, he’s not trying to be ungrateful, but he’s fourteen years old and bored out of his goddamn mind. He wants fresh air. He’s sick of staring at the ceiling and jerking off with his left hand, coming only half the time. He loves Mellie but mashing peas in a little bowl for her to eat is starting to wear him down.

All that changes though when he sees a moving van nosing up the driveway next door where the Millers used to live. Clyde peers into his telescope, then sits back and squints instead, watching the steady progression of boxes being unloaded and carried inside the Millers’ front door.

Then a kid jumps out of the passenger side of the station wagon, wearing oversized cargo shorts and an X-MEN t-shirt. He has the reddest hair Clyde has ever seen, redder even than the sunsets they get down here in Boone County in midsummer. The kid looks to be somewhere around his age, same height, though he’s scrawny and pale, with a floppy haircut that’s just starting to settle. He plants himself down the sidewalk, sitting with his fists resting under his cheek, staring straight ahead at nothing in particular. Clyde imagines he’s moping. He knows what moping looks like; he’s been doing it for the last three weeks. The kid will burn up before he knows it, Clyde catches himself thinking, in the idle way he thinks about anything at all. But he puts it out of his mind entirely and shuts the window to keep the flies out, then heads down to the kitchen to make Mellie and his grandma some lunch.

A few days later, Clyde’s mom tells him she spoke to the new neighbors and there’s a kid Clyde’s age that he might want to say hello to. She hands him a tuna casserole before shoving him out the door with a firm nudge and a squeeze. The bowl sweats with humidity when Clyde, with only one functional arm, brings it over next door where the Millers used to live. He’s almost surprised to see that the front yard is no longer overrun with weeds. Yesterday he’d watched that redhead kid mow the lawn. Actually, he didn’t really mow the lawn so much as lay on the grass and drink from a juicebox while swatting away bees. He’d been barefoot the whole time, had worn a tank top and raggedy shorts. His arms were thin as reeds, white as milk, and Clyde remembers feeling overheated watching him lie there under the shade, spread across the grass like a starfish, his red hair like spilled paint. He didn’t understand why.

Now the front door opens right before Clyde has the opportunity to knock. There he is, up close, green-eyed, freckled. He’s wearing braces and Clyde falls in love on sight, his thoughts sputtering as his palms start to sweat.

“Hello,” Clyde mumbles, and blinks, and blinks. He turns red. He blames it on the weather.

“Hi,” says the boy. He has an accent. Clyde’s mom said they were from Ireland wherever that is, it’s probably in Ohio, they always get folk from there moving to Boone County for the property tax.

“I’m Stensland,” says the boy, rubbing his eyes and scratching a toe up and down his left ankle. He looks like he’s just woken up, hair all mussed up at the back, cheek lined with pillow marks, his skin reeking of sleep laced with sweat.

It takes Clyde a second to stop staring, another to actually respond. “Clyde,” he stutters, then releases a breath he doesn’t know he’s been holding. “Pleased to meet ya’. I live next door. My mom made you tuna casserole.”

“Oh,” Stensland says, and then squints at Clyde’s chest. He bites his lip before swallowing hard and turning red, probably from the heat. “Thank you,” he says, then flits a shy glance up at Clyde, shoulders hunching up. “My parents aren’t home but you’re welcome to come in if you like. That seems like the neighborly thing to do, doesn’t it? We have tea and day-old pastry and the AC happen to be working again and I have playstation…”

“Sure,” Clyde says before Stensland has even finished speaking.

Stensland looks up, startled, but a small friendly smile starts to warp his expression, smoothing it into something softer, more open.

Clyde gets a fleeting glimpse of Stensland’s braces right before Stensland turns away — silver with pink and blue rubber bands.

 


	3. neighbours

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> An American boy moves in next door.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Allan is from _What If_ / **The F Word** (the movie with Dan Rad) and Bernard from _Boy Eats Girl_ ([here](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VOBg7VzdFgo>the%20one%20with%20Donut%20in%20a%20confessional%20booth</a>\).%20Bernard%20is%2018%20here%20and%20Allan%20is%20a%20little%20younger%20than%20movie%20canon,%20around%2020-21.%C2%A0%0A%0AOriginally%20posted%20<a%20href=).

 

The day Allan moves next door, Bernard covers his face with a paperback copy of  _The Hobbit_ so he doesn’t have to look at him. He slides his headphones on instead and grips the edges of his book a little more firmly, forcing himself to finish a chapter before heading back inside to escape the nascent summer heat.

When Allan comes over to introduce himself two days later, it’s in an outrageously tight shirt that’s disarming as his smile. Bernard realizes then that god must hate him. Therefore, fuck it. Fuck his life.

In no particular order Bernard hates: mushy peas, cold feet, and the smell of cold noodles. But nothing comes close to the wave of self-loathing that hits him when Allan moves into his eyeline to ask whether he could borrow a wrench.

Allan curls his hand into a fist to demonstrate the heft of it (Bernard knows what a wrench looks like, thanks) while Bernard stares and stares and… stares. Allan explains that he needs the wrench for repairs of some kind, leaning into Bernard’s personal space as if they’ve known each other all their lives. He can probably drop in by parachute and insinuate himself into any conversation whatsoever. He’s friendly, practically oozing charm, which is more than what Bernard can say about the old folks that used to live next door who were always complaining about the dog Bernard’s family never had.

And he’s American because —  _of course he is_.

“I’m Allan by the way,” Allan says when he remembers to introduce himself. He flashes Bernard a brief smile, the kind that can thaw snowdrifts and cure epidemics.

“Bernard,” Bernard tells him, managing to keep his voice from shaking. He returns Allan’s gaze mildly, fiddling with the hem of his shirt. Then he shifts around for a bit in mild panic before shutting the door in his face.

It’s not exactly the best first impression, but how can you blame Bernard when he’s only had one friend in his life and a little rusty on social interaction. People don’t come up to him to talk because he kind of just hangs back in the periphery and melds into the furnishings. People forget about him, overlook him, which is fantastic, really, as he prefers to avoid attention. Put him on the spot and he’ll probably piss himself (he did once, in primary school during a talent show) but he likes school enough where he gets good grades and is in the good graces of most of his teachers because of his stellar attendance record and generally agreeable demeanor. His peers are another story altogether. He never makes any new friends because no one notices he’s there.

So it doesn’t make any sense that when Allan sees him in the supermarket, he waves at him from across the frozen food aisle. And the park. And the bookshop. And from his front yard where he’s helping his dad mow the lawn. Allan, the boy next door, in the tight t-shirts and cargo shorts, with the floppy dark hair and the lightly-stubbled jaw. He’s older than Bernard by about a couple of years, which is just the thing to make Bernard’s delicate heart pound a little harder. His mam says Allan is supposed to be on his second year of uni but that he’s taking a break to care for his ailing grandma and help his dad with the move. It’s all very Christian, though they hardly see them in church on Sundays.

Bernard gets the nervous sweats around Allan largely because he’s unused to the attention and partly because Allan can get a little intense: he  _leans_ , he  _touches_ , he calls Bernard  _Bern._ He makes these jokes that go way over Bernard’s head but are charming in a plebeian way; American humour is so bizarre and mystifying; somehow it almost always has to involve poop.

And he walks around without a shirt on, never mind the time of day. Once he came over to return Bernard’s dad’s hedge clippers, his chest shiny with patches of sweat. Normally, Bernard wouldn’t have a problem with this if Allan wasn’t so keen on teaching him the finer points of American football and tackling him on the ground.

It all comes to a head one afternoon when Allan pins him on grass after a short-lived match that involved a lot of grunting and yelling and Bernard trying to run back inside the house. Allan is shirtless, naturally, and sweaty, as usual, when he straddles Bernard’s skinny hips and flailing limbs and hovers above him with a triumphant grin, his arms braced on either side of Allan’s head. He smells like freshly cut grass and clean sweat and Bernard can feel him breathing, every ragged inhale going straight to his —

“Hey,” Allan says, blinking, cutting cleanly into whatever thought was about to morph in Bernard’s head. He flicks Bernard gently between the eyebrows with his middle finger and thumb and Bernard scrunches his nose and rubs at his forehead before shooting him a baleful look. “You look cute when you’re all thoughtful. Like a baby chipmunk,” Allan observes. He laughs like this is somehow funny to him, and Bernard can feel that too, the sound of it reverberating in his stomach, his chest, every part of them that’s touching.

When Allan pulls away and rolls off him,  he’s almost disappointed enough to make a sad little noise. Whether Allan hears it or not remains a mystery, because he says nothing as he lies there on his back on the grass next to Bernard, staring up at the sky that’s shifting to dusk above them. Then he tilts his head and glances at Bernard thoughtfully, before leaning up on one elbow and touching Bernard’s hip.

Bernard stops breathing, stops thinking, his body frozen in paralysis. He waits: for something, for anything, and trembles like a leaf when Allan’s hand moves away to tug Bernard’s shirt down where it’s hiked up above his ribs. Then he smooths a hand over Bernard’s stomach, once, twice, and Bernard makes that sound again, that pitiful pathetic noise like when the kid from across the street kicked the tar out of him two summers ago.

Allan smiles and sits up abruptly on his elbows. Bernard wants him to — he wants him to kiss him. He’s so beautiful.  He’s dreamt about him before, the weight and smell of him. His kind laughing eyes. Father Flannagan gave him two Hail Mary’s for it, but Bernard had added another two because this is what he didn’t say: that he’d rolled onto his stomach in bed after that dream and rubbed his cock against the covers, coming in his briefs shortly after imagining Allan watching him from the doorway. He was so weak and trembly after that he cried just a little from how pathetic he felt, and he feels like that now, like he wants to get up and leave, like he wants to  cry, like he wants to pull Allan back flush against his body if only he was brave enough. He’d been  _so_  warm,  _so_ alive. It was nothing like those dreams.

“You shouldn’t let me bully you,” Allan says, keeping his gaze forward and fixed at nothing in particular. He sounds almost angry. “If I do something — anything that makes you uncomfortable, you need to speak up.”

Bernard has no idea what he means. “You don’t bully me.”

“Well, I obviously make you uncomfortable,” Allan snorts.

Bernard thinks about his next words carefully. “That’s not true at all. You’re kind of cool.”

“Just kind of?” Allan grins. Then his expression morphs and he leans forward to brush his knuckles down Bernard’s cheek. “There was a bit of a — ” he cuts himself, trailing off, leaving Bernard holding his breath. Then Allan kisses him — on the cheek after Bernard jerks in alarm and turns his face away, body stiff with panic. It’s quick, barely anything, and Allan looks ashamed as he climbs to his feet and wipes grass stains off his jeans, looking everywhere but Bernard. “Right,” he coughs awkwardly, hands on his hips. “Sorry about the —  _shit_. I better go.”

He leaves. Bernard’s heart hammers loudly in his throat when he finally decides to breathe again. His head thumps softly against the grass as he touches two his fingers to his cheek.


End file.
